1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an air conditioning system using a dehumidifying cooling device, and more particularly, to an air conditioning system using a dehumidifying cooling device which can perform the air cooling operation by using hot water, produced by large-scale or small-scale district heating systems or gas-fired or oil-fired boilers installed in individual households, introduced into the dehumidifying cooling device.
2. Description of the Related Prior Art
There is a developing prospect that the recent high oil prices are not a temporary problem, but will be continuously maintained and fixed. Therefore, the main energy consuming countries of the world will increasingly make great efforts to secure stable energy resources. With the effectuation of the Tokyo protocol dealing with reduction in the discharge of greenhouse gas for the sake of preventing global warming, it will be expected that the international pressure for the limitation of fossil energy use, the criterion of energy efficiency, etc., will be strengthened.
According to a published energy report, the amount of energy consumed in domestic and business fields of Korea in 2003 was approximately 55 millions TOE, and was 25.2% of the total national energy consumption. This rate also corresponds to 41.9% on the basis of electricity use. For the past four years, the energy consumption of domestic and business fields shows an average annual rate of increase of 5.3%, whereas the consumption of electricity shows an average annual rate of increase of 12%. Accordingly, it will be appreciated that the consumption of electricity particularly has experienced a rapid increase. Estimating on the basis of variance in the monthly energy consumption of residential buildings and sample survey results about non-residential buildings as the subject of energy management, it is analyzed that 50% of the energy consumption of residential buildings and 47% of the energy consumption of business buildings are used for air conditioning. In conclusion, of the energy consumption of buildings, energy required for air conditioning occupies 13% of the national total energy consumption of Korea.
Accordingly, to guarantee the efficient use of energy and the continuous development of the energy industry while observing related international agreements, it is necessary to improve the efficiency of energy use for air conditioning in domestic and business fields. From this viewpoint, there is created a so-called collective-energy industry in which thermal energy and electricity, generated by facilities concentrated in a specific place for improving the efficiency of energy in domestic and business fields, are supplied collectively to multiple users in residential and business areas. It is reported that the collective-energy industry uses waste heat created during power generation as a heating source for space heating and hot water heating, thereby achieving not only a reduction of energy by approximately 20 to 30% by virtue of improved efficiency, but also an improvement of air environment by approximately 30 to 40% by virtue of a reduction of fuel usage and intensive environmental management. The collective-energy industry is evaluated as an effective industry, capable of dealing with related international environmental restrictions including climatic change conventions, etc. In the affirmative evaluation's debt, approximately 1.2 million families in Korea shared in the benefits of district heating in 2003, and in particular, 85% of supplied energy was generated by combined heat and power generation. Korea has a plan to expand the propagation of district heating to 2 million families by 2010.
In combined heat and power generation, called cogeneration, the generation ratio of electricity to heat is fixed at 3:5. Therefore, it is important to keep the ratio of electricity to heat at an appropriate level for maximizing the effect of the collective-energy industry. In Korea, the above mentioned generation ratio can be fulfilled in winter, but summer in Korea produces an increased electrical load for air cooling, and substantially no heat load. As a result, the operation rate of dedicatrd heating in summer decreases to less than 10%, and this causes deterioration in the economic efficiency of cogeneration. Actually, no generation results were reported between June and September in 2003.
To improve the operation rate of collective-energy generation facilities for efficiently using the effects of the industry, reducing the demand of heat in summer is necessary, and in particular, development and propagation of a technology for supplying cooling energy using distinct heating facilities is necessary.
In one example of the above described cooling energy supply technology, an absorption chiller is installed in a receptor, such as a large-scale building, etc., such that the chiller performs a central cooling operation using energy delivered from distinct heating facilities.
The absorption chiller is designed to chill water flowing in a pipe, using heat generated during the evaporation of a liquid-phase refrigerant, and condense the evaporated gas-phase refrigerant for reuse.
However, in spite of various researches and developments for improving the performance of the absorption chiller, there is a limit on the improvement of performance due to the low temperature of a heating source. In addition, the absorption chiller has an uneconomical high water return temperature because it cannot use water having a temperature of 80° C. or less, and suffers from a small differential between the temperature of supplied water and the temperature of returned water.
When the absorption chiller is installed in an apartment, etc. taking up the largest portion of district heating to provide central cooling, there is a problem in that cold water pipes have to be additionally installed regardless of hot water supply pipes.
The present invention has been made in view of the above problems, and it is an object of the present invention to provide an air conditioning system using a dehumidifying cooling device which can produce efficient air cooling by incorporating hot water, produced by large-scale or small-scale district heating systems or gas-fired or oil-fired boilers installed in individual households, into the dehumidifying cooling device installed in each household.